Warm, sunny and relaxed is how the author Bill Bryson has described Rome. Rewind to 2007 and the warm and sunny bits of his description were there.
But relaxed? Wales’ rugby captain Gareth Thomas was anything but as his team endured an afternoon which could not have been more stressful had all concerned been challenged to cross an impossibly busy Roman road during rush hour, amid a multitude of horn-tooting, lane-jumping drivers, some of them not entirely abiding by the Italian equivalent of the Highway Code.
By tea-time, Thomas was in a state of apoplexy, Wales had suffered only their second-ever defeat to Italy and head coach Gareth Jenkins was one step closer to losing his job. Oh, and the events of the afternoon ensured referee Chris White could forget about being named that year’s Mr Popularity this side of the River Severn. Thinking about it, at one point that day, while he declined to answer his dressing room door while Thomas hammered on it from outside, White's ambitions probably extended no further than finding a way out of the said changing area in one piece. For him, a fast car parked outside the back would have been ideal. Facing a raging Thomas less so.
